


outfitting of the budget-conscious dream thief

by hardscrabble



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Banter, Clothes, Gen, fashion - Freeform, no i'm not, welcome to an extended joke based on a 2012 song and also I am sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26639743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardscrabble/pseuds/hardscrabble
Summary: “Look, I mean. It’s been slim pickings, and you go and buy a flat and get that charity off the ground and you’re still wearing new suits every day. Do you have a money tree?”
Comments: 16
Kudos: 45
Collections: InceptGen





	outfitting of the budget-conscious dream thief

**Author's Note:**

> for InceptGen's Week 1 prompt.

“Look, though,” Eames says. “Look, I mean. It’s been slim pickings, and you go and buy a _flat_ and get that charity off the ground and you’re _still_ wearing new suits every day. Do you have a money tree?”

“Money doesn’t grow on trees,” Cobb mutters, and notices the joke, and laughs.

Saito is notably silent. He appeared for the job the way he does sometimes, filled cracks in the outline, went under as another jack-of-all-trades-but-forging, and now sits in the chair he’d dreamed in. They safely deposited the mark in her home and drew up the report to the client. Now they’re strewn around the workshop, a storefront with plywood over the plate glass, decompressing. Approximately decompressing.

It hadn’t been a high-paying thing. Cobb has soured on corporate, and now that he’s safe, they all feel better taking what the prestige extractors overlook as too pedestrian. So Eames has a point, protracted as it is, about earnings and expenditures.

Arthur sighs heavily. “I don’t,” he says, measured, “wear a new suit every day. I mix pieces.”

“He does,” Ariadne puts in. She sounds drifty. It wasn’t a _difficult_ job, but all of them involve a lot of up-and-down in the design stage, and they’ve all had a week that lasted about four hundred real-time hours. “I liked, what was it, Wednesday’s. The dove-grey vest with the brown pinstripe trousers. Textural.”

“Every other day,” says Eames with a sigh. “Fine. I will concede. Every other _day_ , then, Arthur.”

Yusuf rouses enough to say, “You’d need a proper inventory to work out the… thing.”

“And if anyone in this room were to have an inventory of their wardrobe…”

“Not so fast,” Saito says, and the silence his voice leaves in its wake is as shocked as any of them can bring themselves to be. Just before the shock transmutes to tension, he says, “In truth, an aide has the inventory.”

They’ve all learned not to ask whether he’s joking.

“ _Thank_ you, Mr. Saito,” says Eames instead. “With the exception of our honored consultant, then. I still don’t see how you afford it all, Arthur. Unless you sew all of it up… Are you a tailor? Are you a secret tailor? A secret… _seamster?_ ”

Ariadne snorts. “As if you can’t recognize a Burberry plaid, Eames.”

“I only have the one Burberry jacket,” Arthur points out. “I don’t like how they do the shoulders.”

“I had to test his commitment to the story, Ariadne. So you _do_ buy designer. My question remains. _How_?”

“Saito buys designer,” Yusuf says, as a counterargument.

“Saito does not buy designer,” Saito replies, so formally that he has to be taking the piss. “Saito chooses his colors. His wardrobe team know his fabric preferences. He has monthly updates of his measurements. He has his tailors informed of events one month in advance.”

“Saito does bespoke,” Ariadne summarizes.

“I, however,” says Arthur, “as a normal person, buy designer, but on consignment, because I am a sane normal person.”

Ariadne almost drags herself upright. “Which sites?” she demands. “Where—”

“Consignment,” Eames interrupts, tone blank.

Arthur’s reply is accompanied by an eyeroll none of them see. “Yes, consignment. It’s a relatively simple—"

“Consignment,” Eames repeats, and bursts into giggles.

Eames can be dignified. He can, with equal facility, be undignified. He giggles.

“What’s consignment?” Cobb asks, sounding at sea.

Ariadne apparently puts aside the issue of shaking Arthur down for clothing sources in favor of throwing Cobb a line. “Secondhand but more official,” she says briskly. “Do you use—”

“Arthur, darling, you turn yourself out in these suits from _thrift shops_ — _”_ Eames interrupts himself, too busy laughing.

Which is just as well, because Ariadne and Arthur both undergo controlled verbal explosions simultaneously. “It’s _nothing_ like a thrift shop,” Ariadne says vehemently.

“You wanna talk about thrift shops, let’s talk about that polo—”

“There’s verification steps,” says Ariadne. “ _Licensing_. Jeez, I got my Loubs with a certificate of authenticity—"

“You have Loubs?” asks Yusuf.

“You know what Loubs are?” Arthur demands of him.

“What are Loubs,” says Cobb, but not as if he expects an answer.

“They’re _not_ what you find in _thrift shops_ ,” Arthur snarls.

Eames is still snickering. And a minute later, still, without even trying to corral himself into speech.

The team settles. Or, rather, everyone but Saito settles, as Saito is never anything but serenity unless he’s taking out projections. Cobb resigns himself to not knowing what a Loub is. Yusuf folds his arm behind his head and rests on it. Ariadne thinks of comparing notes with Arthur. Arthur thinks of Eames’s closet of 80s-looking patterned polo shirts, and then thinks of shooting things.

And Eames, five minutes after he’s fallen silent, says, “Only got twenty dollars in my pocket…”

“ _No_ ,” they all yell at once.

“Looking for a come-up…”

Saito removes one of his loafers and throws it across the room. It hits Eames square in the stomach. “You will cease,” he says forbiddingly, while Eames is still spluttering, and then repeats, “You _will_ cease. Yes?”

Eames holds up his hands, Saito’s hand-cobbled loafer in his lap. “Yes. I surrender. I will mackle no more.”

No one does any more settling after that.

They’re too busy trying to kill Eames. Just a little bit.

**Author's Note:**

> THE AUTHOR IS NOT TO BE HELD LIABLE FOR EARWORMS but strongly recommends putting your current favorite album or single on loop for a little while
> 
> I'm on tumblr and twitter as valhecka :) thank you SO MUCH to the InceptGen crew!


End file.
